It is almost impossible to write a book in which Theodore Roosevelt plays a supporting role. If he's in it, he's the star. Roosevelt's ability to take over a story is all the more remarkable because none of the 20th century's most defining events — from international economic depression to ideological revolutions to devastating world wars — took place during his presidency. Even today, 100 years after his death, it is less Roosevelt's achievements that we remember than the sheer force of his personality.
“The Crowded Hour” is a rare exception to this rule. In Clay Risen's fast-paced, carefully researched new history of Roosevelt's regiment of Rough Riders, which dazzled Americans during the Spanish-American War, the future president may be in the thick of the action, but he does not monopolize the story, quietly stepping aside for long stretches of time. In his place appears an irresistible cast of characters, from a unit of fearless black soldiers to the swashbuckling artist Frederic Remington, the novelist Stephen Crane and the legendary journalist Richard Harding Davis, whose hagiographic articles would make the Rough Riders not just famous but iconic. It quickly becomes clear, however, that the book's central character is neither Roosevelt nor any of these men. It is the brash young country they dared the world to dismiss.
To its citizens and admirers, the United States “had never been just a country,” Risen writes, “it was an idea too.” Carefully constructed, brutally contested, boldly if imperfectly embodied, this singular idea had stirred widespread hope that liberty and equality might be possible, even contagious. More than a century after winning its independence, however, the United States had yet to turn its fame into what it really wanted: respect. In the eyes of much of Europe, the country still seemed like “a hypertrophied child,” Risen argues, “with astounding economic growth and resources, but without the maturity to play a role in world affairs.”
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